Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
--This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
--To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

-William Shakespeare

Homecoming

Snowfall, thicker and thicker,
dovecolored, like yesterday,
snowfall, as if you had been asleep just now.
Into the distance, the stacked-up whiteness
and beyond, endless,
the sleightrace of the lost.
Below, hidden,
pushing itself upward,
what hurts the eyes so much,
mound after mound,
invisible.
On each mound,
brought home to its today,
sucked down into its muteness: an I,
a wooden post.
There: a feeling—
blown across by the icewind,
it fastens its dove-, its snow-
colored cloth bannerwise.

-Paul Celan, 1990

Psalm Above Santa Fe
--------16 March 1987

What is it we
---------come to
----------------between mountains,

long crests tipped white,
---------dusted on their flanks, while
----------------light spreads out

before us,
---------pouring in our lap
----------------soft as iris tongues,

and
---------the lungs finally
----------------filled with freshness

unwilled
---------because unlooked for:
----------------sparse grass,

rocks
---------announcing in a weathered language
----------------something eyes

seem to have known
---------before they came to the way
----------------called sight.

Even the animals at dusk,
---------could we see them stare at us,
----------------have such souls.

-John Judson, 1987

Add to the list of books I have been reading: Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, which offered the following relevant quote: "For me, poems are presents to be exchanged within an extended family." I've wondered about the strict legality of Wednesday poemday, since I'm reprinting without permission. But I make no profit from this; but good poems seem to benefit from being passed around. 

Last week I was talking to some Norwegians when I whipped out my phone to share pictures. I don't have a Norwegian SIM card (thanks, AT&T and SaskTel for my locked phones, really appreciate that) so my telephone is basically a game-playing and picture-sharing device. Most of the picture-sharing involves pictures of my cranes, because my cranes are one (perhaps the only) goofy facet of my life for which people request photographic evidence (didn't I predict that cranes would become my wallet pictures? I'm pretty sure smartphones are the new version of wallet photographs). But there are some pictures of home on there, too, and when those came up I said, "Look! That's where I from!" because I take endless delight in sharing photographs (hence this blog).

"But where are the people?" asked the guy holding my phone.

"They're in the valley," I said.

It occurs to me now that he may've been wondering where the pictures of my family were; I'm genuinely not sure. If that's the case, my family was probably behind me. But the people--the people were in the valley, for the most part. That's where people congregate, isn't it? In valleys, along  rivers.

Still, the question and my interpretation of it revealed my own bias for the illusion of wilderness; so many of the pictures I've posted here since I returned to Norway have been of the mountains, not the valley (or, in Tromsø's case, the island, but compared to the mountains Tromsøya is low and flat and may as well be the valley). After all, I spend most of my time here, with people, and peaks only a distant silhouette. 

As I Stumble

I must make my own sun
regularly to avoid being lost
within and frozen to death.
The poem as I make it
out of the wood of the forest
in which I roam, rubbing
the pieces together--
picked up
as I stumble upon them.

-David Ignatow, 1964

"Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else--so chance-like are such observations of the hills--your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery..."

-Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

The Gate

I stand here watching the light go by,
Like an old grey horse who stands in front of a gate
And watches the people go past,
And doesn’t know a way to go through.

You take trails men have been riding
Through this border country for years.
Somebody comes and puts a fence across ’em.
I made my own gates, I did.

-Drum Hadley, 2005

I've acquired a habit that I deplored when I was younger: reading several books at once. Right now I have bookmarks in five volumes (when I was younger I also refused to use bookmarks and memorized the number of the page where I had stopped instead, but that was always kind of stupid), though I would argue that at least three of them are intended to be read piecemeal. One of those three is 'The Norton Book of Nature Writing,' which I've been working my way through since last spring. The anthology is organized chronologically by author birth year which means that I've only now, around page 1000, reached Barbara Kingsolver and her essay 'High Tide in Tucson,' which I read this morning while I gave my frying pan some time to cool in between frying my bacon and potatoes and frying an egg.

These are times when a book gives you a small, perfect gift, and that's how I felt this morning with my feet kicked up on the coffee table. It's a beautiful essay. If I could I would reprint it here for you in its entirety, but it runs for ten pages in small print, and I haven't got the time or the reprint rights. As I write this I have my book propped open with my left elbow, and I'm trying to find a quote that captures the essence of this in a jar, because this morning it spoke to me so clearly, held me riveted while my tea grew cold. It said things I have tried to say, but it's better than anything I ever managed.